Extinguishing Medical Errors with Oil and Gas

Unfortunately for patients and healthcare workers alike, medical errors happen. No matter how well-trained and experienced the practitioner, underneath the scrubs there still resides a human and errors will follow. However, systems can be put in place to minimise them and medicine could do well to learn lessons from other industries. In 2012, there were 107 serious medical errors in Australian hospitals. These ranged from surgery performed on the wrong patient or body part, to surgery where instruments were left inside the patient, to medication errors and in-hospital suicides 1. When considered in the context of the 53 million patient interactions that occurred that year 1, the serious medical error rate is a staggeringly low 0.0002%. However, when the type of errors are considered, like operating on the wrong patient, it’s apparent there is still room for improvement. Since surgeons are generally intelligent, highly trained and well-meaning people who don’t intentionally operate on the wrong patient, then what is going wrong to allow such seemingly basic errors to happen? Making basic errors reminded me of me in my early twenties when I worked as a glorified labourer on offshore oil platforms in the booming Western Australian ‘Oil and Gas’ industry. The oil and gas (O&G) industry taught me many things (like becoming a doctor was a really attractive option), but it also taught me a lot about quality & safety. O&G has a huge array of structures and sy...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Administration Medical Errors atul gawande O&G oil and gas industry Source Type: blogs